Cochlear Implantation: Exploring Technoscience and Designs on Citizenship

Abstract

Around the globe more than 350,000 citizens live with a sophisticated hearing aid device called Cochlear Implant. In many countries CI is an institutionalized medical procedure for restoring deafened with a technological sense of hearing but the social challenges for users is a largely unexplored issue. Addressing this social dimension, the article explores how Cochlear Implant works as a boundary object between social worlds and how it carries designs on citizenship. Designs on citizenship is not only an issue of unexpected forms of Deaf resistance. On a more substantial level, designs on citizenship concerns the way Cochlear Implant intersects with different social worlds. In specific, the articles explores the world of medical knowledge in conjunction with the social world of users. As new forms of living with technoscience is actively negotiated in the social world of usage, we may understand technoscience to carry designs on citizenship by opening up new places of belonging.